Every day we meditated leaving, and every day her good-humour, and a bath and walk at the delicious sea-side, made us abandon our resolve, and-- "Tempered us to bear; It was but for a day." Indeed, it was impossible to be otherwise than content, to find oneself seated in one of the pretty alcoves of the Bath gardens, with a magnificent expanse of sparkling sea before the eye, a gentle murmur of waters at the feet, a hundred gleaming sails, white and red, gliding along the surface of the glittering wave, the towers of the distant town shining out from the mass of buildings which surround them, the full harbour, the green alleys, the superb trees, the pretty shrubs, the distant island shores, everything, in fact, smiling and gay and beautiful around.

To forget Les Trois Chandeliers, and to grudge the time necessary for finding a new domicile, was a natural consequence; and the want of _materiel_ to satisfy the sea-side appetite--sure to be gained after a whole day's sojourn on the beach--became an after consideration, our domestic privations were therefore constantly neglected, bewailed, and forgotten again next day while eating grapes and bread in the beloved alcove.
There appears to be much ease in the circumstances of the inhabitants of La Rochelle: we understood that there were not many persons of very large fortune, but few positively poor.

The commerce is inferior now to what it has been; as, for instance, in the _glorious_ time of the _slave trade_; but there appears still to be a good deal of bustle on the quays: however, to an English eye, all French trade seems dull when compared to the movement in our own ports.

There is always building going on here, as in every other town in France, where one might imagine everything had been at a stand-still for a century, and had suddenly been endowed with new life and activity.

The cities of France seem--like the enchanted domains of the marble prince of the Arabian Nights--to have been doomed to a long inaction, and restored to existence by an invisible power.